


Initiative Test Prep

by plingo_kat



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-31
Updated: 2011-10-31
Packaged: 2017-10-25 02:58:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/270979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plingo_kat/pseuds/plingo_kat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A day in the life of Steve Rogers, SAT tutor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Initiative Test Prep

**Author's Note:**

> So basically I saw leupagus' [Damn, Your Fandom Is Good At What You Do Fest](http://leupagus.livejournal.com/99028.html) and temporarily lost control of my life.

“Oh my god.” Steve looks up from the worksheet he’s filling out. Tony, dressed in sweatpants and a right-hand-rule shirt, practically runs for the computers. “Is my tutee here yet? Hey--come on, where’s the time clock website--aha.”

“Good morning, Tony,” Steve says. “You’re only fifteen minutes late, it’s fine. Your kid probably ditched, nobody wants to wake up at eight on a Saturday morning.”

“No kidding,” Tony snorts. “Especially during the summer, who does that? Mornings in summer should be banned.”

“Stay up all night playing computer games again?”

Tony draws himself up. “Assassin’s Creed is not just a _comupter game,_ ” he lectures. “It’s a thing of beauty and, and fun, and also running around in a hood _assassinating people_. It’s just, it’s the best, okay.”

“Okay.” Steve doesn’t have any video games, prefers to read and draw, which is why he’s tutoring Reading and Writing and Tony’s got Math.

“Hello, Anthony!” Thor pokes his head out briefly from the box room, whiteboard markers and rubber bands in hand. Thor has this _thing_ about calling people by their first names. “Would you like to assist me in assembling these boxes?”

Tony glances at Steve, dutifully circling answers on his worksheet; the stack of attendance records that need to be filed; the schedule lists of location changes and no-classes that need to be called.

“Sure,” he says.

 

Steve has tutoring from ten to one, and when he gets back he heads straight for the fridge.

“Oh!” he says, delighted. “Chicken alfredo pasta.”

“It’s really good,” Bruce says from inside a supply cabinet. “I had some.”

“Good,” Steve says. “And hi, Bruce.” Bruce just waves a hand at him. It’s streaked with green highlighter.

Steve goes to seek out Tony, because the other boy always gets caught up in what he’s doing and forgets to eat. Also, it’s kind of nice to have somebody to talk to when lunch is heating up in the microwave.

“Have you seen Tony?” Steve asks Thor.

“Twenty-five, twenty-six--” Thor looks up. “No, I have not. Anthony left to impart knowledge at eleven, but his schedule is on the computer if you wish to view it.” He gestures and papers fly everywhere. “Odin’s beard,” Steve hears him mutter.

Steve helps gather the papers, and then checks Tony’s tutoring schedule: off at one, two hour break. Either he’s getting water in the breakroom or hidden himself in the supply closet again, writing nasty corrections in people’s blue books.

As Steve leaves the room, something epic and opera-sounding comes on in Scandinavian on Thor’s iPod.

 

Tony is, in a fit of glorious irresponsibility and possibly life-threatening impulsiveness, drawing fantastical armor-schematics on the whiteboard in the room where Natasha is proctoring. Or supposed to be proctoring; she probably stepped out for a moment after intimidating the hell out of her students.

“Natasha will kill you if she finds you here,” Steve murmurs after easing the door open and seeing the coast is clear. “Especially after the last time.”

“That was a misunderstanding,” Tony argues, and scribbles something with a lot of variables and brackets. “Her hair _grew back_.”

“Just--come on” Steve grabs Tony’s wrist, gently, and takes the marker out of it with his other hand. “You can help me with the microwave.”

“Oh my god,” Tony complains, but follows Steve docilely enough. “I’ve explained this to you a thousand times, you’ve seen me do it a thousand times, there are _instructions on the back of the box_ , how do you not know how to cook a microwave meal?”

“I do!” Steve protests. “It’s just, why are there three ‘cook’ buttons, and the one at home is different, it doesn’t have _power_ functions. What even is ‘setting on high’ anyway?”

“Hopeless,” Tony mutters, but he sounds fond.

 

“It’s you,” Clint says flatly when he comes through the door. Steve and Tony are loitering around the microwave waiting for their pasta alfredo to cook. Tony is sulking because Steve won’t let him stick two cartons in at once (“The thing is big enough!” “No, Tony, what if it explodes?”).

“Hello, Clint,” Steve says, but it’s kind of lost judging by the way Clint is glaring at Tony.

“Hi, Clint,” Tony says, and edges toward Steve a little, like he wants to hide. Steve sighs.

“What did you do, Tony?”

“I didn’t do anything, why do you assume I did anything, I’m totally innocent--”

“He changed my ringtone to _Milkshake_ and then called me in the middle of class,” Clint says, eyes narrowed. “Caller ID says Natasha, but I know it was you, Stark.”

Tony gives both of them big, innocent eyes. The microwave beeps.

“Oh look, my food is done,” he says breezily. “Time to go. Bye, Clint, nice to see you.”

He grabs the plastic box and a disposable fork and bolts. Steve sighs. That was his lunch.

“Do you want to go first?” he says, and gestures at the microwave.

“Nah, I’m good. Just came in for water.” Clint procures a thermos. “You’re the only one who can control him at all, you know.”

Steve makes a noncommittal noise. He doesn’t control Tony; nobody can. He just... calms him down a little.

“Er,” he says once he places his lunch in the microwave, staring at the buttons. “I don’t--Clint, help?”

 

“Fury’s in a _mood,_ ” Bruce informs him when he gets back behind the invisible barrier of the reception desk. He also swipes a few coffee candies for Tony from the candy bowl. “You should hide.”

Steve nods. “Thanks.”

Instead of hiding, he goes to look for Tony. Fury loves to pick on Tony when he’s angry, and Tony always snipes back, which is bad for his continued employment. Steve has to save them from each other.

“I hear Fury is mad,” he says when he finds Tony rummaging through the candy cabinet.

“We’re out of Twix again,” Tony says. “You want a cookie?”

“Are they the chewy kind?”

“Yep. Had a class of four, there’s plenty left over. Box-making.” Tony looks smug. “It’s an art.”

“And I bet you sorted the movies too, didn’t you,” says Steve, because he knows how things work. “You do realize we’ll never actually be able to take any of them home with us.”

“Those philistines don’t _deserve_ a Jurassic Park dvd,” Tony says. “They can just deal with getting--” he checks, “Shark Attack 3: Megalodon. Oh my god, that’s so terrible I even feel a little bit sorry.” He swaps it for something that has Leonardo DiCaprio and a scantily dressed woman on the cover.

“You do realize we have three copies of Casino Royale and The Fellowship of the Ring now, right?” Steve says.

Tony gives him a flat look. _So?_

“Never mind,” Steve says. “Look, you should, um, be inconspicuous for a while.”

Tony snorts. “Because of Fury, that blowhard? He needs me, I’m the best physics and math tutor here. Actually, I’m pretty much the only physics and math tutor here.”

Steve hears something behind him.

“Oh crap,” Tony says.

Steve turns around. Yep, Fury.

He utters something a little stronger than _crap_ in his head.

 

The chewing out lasts half and hour in Fury’s office, the door closed. Steve looks down at the floor a lot and steps on Tony’s foot whenever he opens his mouth to argue.

“Are we clear?” Fury says, glowering with his one good eye.

“Yes, sir,” Steve says, because he always reverts to excessive formality when stressed.

“I don’t--” Tony says before Steve _accidentally_ elbows him in the side. “Okay, yes, fine, got it. Can we go now?”

“Out,” Fury points.

Steve drags Tony away.

Practically everyone is loitering suspiciously near the doorway. Natasha is the first to speak up.

“Wow,” she says to Tony. “You must have really pissed Fury off, he loves Steve.”

“Not really,” Steve begins, but is cut off by Bruce.

“Yeah, he kind of does.”

“Verily,” Thor says, and everybody pauses for a moment to process that.

“Did you just--” Tony says, but cuts himself off and shakes his head. “Of course you did, you’re amazing. And now me and Steve are going to go do work like the busy worker bees we are, or whatever, like you guys should be. Bye.”

Steve waves, helplessly, as Tony drags him away.

 

Thor fucks off early because it’s Thursday, and on Thursdays he gets off at two-thirty, and Steve and Tony and (Steve presumes) everybody else work diligently for the rest of the day, until six-thirty when _everybody_ can fuck off back home in the middle of rush-hour traffic. Except Tony and Steve, because it’s their turn to lock up.

“Can we play Final Countdown?” Tony asks, idly, eyeing the last kid through the office’s glass. “The day doesn’t feel complete if we don’t play Final Countdown.”

“But we aren’t doing any work,” Steve points out. He’s kind of sprawled over one of the chairs in the waiting area.

“I could go make a box,” Tony offers. “You could help. You could get some M&Ms to take home.”

“But then you’d have to turn on all the lights and computers again,” Steve says.

“Good point.”

There’s silence.

“Maybe if we play it really loud, that kid’s parents will get here faster.” Tony’s already clicking the volume button on his iPod.

“It’s not her fault,” Steve defends the girl half-heartedly. She looks miserable, hunched and waiting. It must be terrible, sitting through a three-hour class only for her parents to be late picking her up. “Do you think we should go keep her company?”

The opening strains of _Final Countdown_ is the only reply Tony gives him. Steve sighs.


End file.
